Are multiverses real? An astrophysicist explains why it depends on how you define ‘real’
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an…
US team makes phonon lasers as a step towards ‘unjammable’ navigation
Scientists at the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology have engineered a squeezed phonon laser that…
Liquids can fracture like solids under extreme stress: Scientists
Researchers from Drexel University have discovered that liquids can, it appears, fracture like solids under specific conditions. In…
‘To do something nobody’s done’: quantum physicist Zhu Zijie leaves Europe for China
Science and Nature are among the world’s most prestigious journals, which most scientists strive to publish in but…
The physics of no return: What actually happens if you get pulled into a black hole
In 1916, only a year after Albert Einstein had published his general theory of relativity, Karl Schwarzschild used…
Scientists create tornado of light to power lasers, quantum devices
Light usually travels in straight lines, but what if it could twist, spiral, and behave like a miniature…
This hidden state of water could explain why life exists
Researchers at Stockholm University have used advanced x-ray lasers to uncover a long-suspected feature of water: a critical…
two stars approaching each other like a cosmic clock
A century ago, Albert Einstein predicted that massive objects that orbit each other would send tiny ripples through…
Scientists just found a way to store massive data using light in 3 dimensions
Researchers have developed a new holographic data storage method that records and retrieves information in three dimensions by…
Why Most Quantum Computers Need to Be Colder Than Space
The large gold chandelier-like structure that has come to represent quantum computers in popular culture is actually just…
After 20 years, scientists finally explain the Crab Pulsar’s strange “zebra stripes”
For more than 20 years, astronomers have been puzzled by a striking pattern of bright, evenly spaced stripes…
Adventitious carbon breaks symmetry in oxide contact electrification
SiO2 accounts for up to 60% of the Earth’s crust, primarily in minerals such as olivine and pyroxene1.…